POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE
A postdoctoral research opportunity in the Sequential Cognition and
Language group (directed by Peter F. Dominey) at the Institut des Sciences
Cognitives (Lyon France) is available immediately, to investigate the role
of multiple-cue integration in language acquisition across different
languages. The project (http://cnl.psych.cornell.edu/mcila) is funded by
the Human Frontiers Science Program and involves four closely interacting
research teams in France (Peter Dominey, Institut des Sciences Cognitives),
the US (Morten Christiansen, Cornell University), the UK (Nick Chater,
University of Warwick), and Japan (Mieko Ogura, Tsurumi University).
MULTIPLE-CUE INTEGRATION IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION:
MECHANISMS AND NEURAL CORRELATES
How do children acquire the subtle and complex structure of their
native language with such remarkable speed and reliability, and with
little direct instruction? Recent computational and acoustic analyses
of language addressed to children indicate that there are rich cues
to linguistic structure available in the child's input. Moreover,
evidence from developmental psycholinguistics shows that infants are
sensitive to many sound-based (phonological) and intonational
(prosodic) cues in the input - cues that may facilitate language
acquisition. Although this research indicates that linguistic input
is rich with possible cues to linguistic structure, there is an
important caveat: the cues are only partially reliable and none
considered alone provide an infallible bootstrap into language. To
acquire language successfully, it seems that the child needs to
integrate a great diversity of multiple probabilistic cues to
linguistic structure in an effective way.
Our research program aims to provide a rigorous cross-linguistic test
of the hypothesis that multiple-cue integration is crucial for the
acquisition of syntactic structure. The research has four interrelated
strands:
1) Computational and acoustic analyses of child-directed speech.
2) Psycholinguistic and artificial language learning experiments.
3) Computational modeling using neural networks and statistical
learning methods.
4) Event-related potential (ERP) studies.
Specifics for the Lyon Post-Doctoral Position:
The selected researcher will participate in this HFSP funded project
addressing aspects of language acquisition through simulation, behavioral
and brain imagery (ERP) studies.
The position will involve:
1. Statistical and acoustic analysis of natural language corpora
2. Participation in neural network simulation of language acquisition
processes based on the preceding analysis. An example of a this type of
approach can be found in: Dominey PF, Ramus F (2000) Neural network
processing of natural language: I. Sensitivity to serial, temporal and
abstract structure of language in the infant. Language and Cognitive
Processes, 15(1) 87-127
3. Testing of human subjects in artificial language learning experiments.
The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications, though
candidates with a subset of these will also be considered:
1. A PhD in a related discipline (linguistics/psycholinguistics, computer
science, computational neuroscience, cognitive science).
2. Familiarity with the Childes language database and associated analysis
tools, and/or experience/interest in computational aspects of language
acquisition.
3. Native French, and fluent English.
4. Some computational background, with experience in the Linux/Unix C
environment, and in cognitive neuroscience simulation.
Interested candidates should send a letter of intention, a CV and three
letters of recommendation to Peter F. Dominey at the address below.
Applications will continue to be accepted until the position is filled. The
position is for one to two years. In addition to salary, funds are
available for travel to conferences and meetings between research teams.
The position does not carry any special citizen requirements.
Peter Ford Dominey, Ph.D.
Institut des Sciences Cognitives
CNRS UMR 5015
67, Boulevard Pinel
69675 BRON Cedex
FRANCE
Telephone: 04 37 91 12 12
Direct line: 04 37 91 12 66
FAX: 04 37 91 12 10
email: dominey@isc.cnrs.fr
WEB: http://www.isc.cnrs.fr/dom/dommenu.htm
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